Kitchen Sink

By Spencer Hamilton

An explosive collection spanning Spencer Hamilton's entire career as a storyteller, KITCHEN SINK features stories of literary horror that will unsettle your very core.

Inside you will find a splash of something for everyone: a Kafkaesque creature, Frankenstein's Law, a team of time-travelers, a mysterious land of giants and talking cats, a man down on his luck at Christmas, an autopsy gone wrong, a dusty pool table shop that's more than it seems, whispers from a kitchen sink's drain . . .

Stories of ghosts and of depression, of loss and of fear, of blood and the things we do to one another. Hamilton's gift for writing compelling characters and visceral details will give you glimpses into our nature as human beings and creatures of story. With each turn of the page, Hamilton explores our own perceptions—of ourselves, of our memories, and of each other.

Twenty-seven pieces from one person's story, collected here for the first time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nerdy Wordsmith
• Release date: Jan 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393146605

Book preview

To my family

Mom, Dad, Landon, Alyssa, Lyrica, and BFJ

and Aunt Jerry

Table of Contents

Introduction

Hive

Love’s Embrace

Promethium 147

What Kept Him Up at Night

The Diary

Shuffle

Gravitas Mortem

The Wormhole in Edwin’s Cubicle

Happy Hour

The Seuss

Joe Builds a Sunset

Finite Forceman MDCLXVII

Truth Is a Dragon

The Movie Massacre

Maybe Tomorrow

Ten Thousand Steps

The Hole

Houdini’s Last Halloween

The Aria of Avaleon and Aerlin

Rest in Peace

Autopsy of a Marriage

The War on Christmas

The Dreams of Alexis Wild

Pool Tables of the Future

A Story about Fear

The Kitchen Sink

A Rebellion in Words

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

The most frightening monsters are the ones inside of us.

The most compelling monsters are the ones inside of us.

I’ve been on a quest to find and to tame my own monster over the course of the twelve years this book represents.

Quite the journey.

Humans are creatures united in their love of story. We make sense of the world and of ourselves through storytelling, whether through the stories we tell ourselves or the narratives we tell each other. History, novels, movies, stage plays, music, our own memories—these are all story.

My favorite form is the short story, because it is the hardest to crack, because it is the one most resistant to rules, because it is the most versatile and therefore the most adaptable.

Short stories haunt me. From a very early age, I was struck by the madman’s descent in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart and the time-travel mishap in Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder, and they haven’t let go of me since. The short works of H.P. Lovecraft have become a part of our cultural zeitgeist. Philip K. Dick’s warnings of the future seem all too real—even as we live in that future. Short stories are powerful, my friend.

In this collection you and I will explore my own storytelling, from the beginning of my career to now. The earliest of these were written when I was only seventeen years old, the most recent as I approach my thirtieth birthday. All along the way I am grappling with the world around me and with the world inside of me.

Whether it be a more literal, Kafkaesque monster like in Hive, or the monsters of denial like in Promethium 147 and The War on Christmas, or the million tiny monsters that compel us to do any number of atrocities to ourselves or to each other, the core of Kitchen Sink can be found in what I like to call the monster question:

Why do we do the things we do?

I believe this is a question Stephen King has been chasing and filmmakers like Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad) have explored for decades. And the same is true for the book you are now reading.

The inception of Kitchen Sink began with a throwaway expression: Everything but the kitchen sink. The idea was that I would gather everything I’d written and throw it out there and hey, maybe someone would like it. But this very quickly transformed—as all monsters do—into something else entirely. The title almost immediately changed from Everything But the Kitchen Sink . . . to what it is now.

Not all of the stories you are about to read are horror.

But all of them contain a monster.

Just like each of us.

Spencer Hamilton

January 2020

HIVE

Quentin Kelly’s mind was expanding . Not in a well-read sort of way. Not in a philosophical or psychedelic sort of way, though the latter got closer to the truth. Quentin Kelly’s mind was expanding physically, as were his sight and hearing and smell and just about every other sense. Pushing themselves outside of his own body’s limited perceptions to embody his entire bedroom, small though it was. Continued pushing out in a growing radius, with Quentin’s body as its epicenter, out and out and out, consuming the walls and then the halls and then his mother’s bedroom and the one and a half bathrooms and the kitchen. Consuming all that food in the pantry, then the fridge once its door could be pried open. Then the dog. What had the dog’s name been? Quentin couldn’t remember. It was silly tidbits of information like that which his mind had discarded first.

Quentin’s mind halted its expansion in the confines of the house, but just barely. The walls pushed out like a distended abdomen, as if warped and swollen with water. The foundations, however, didn’t stop his mind. They buckled under the weight of it, pressed themselves into the dirt, and Quentin’s mind continued to quest and tendril down into the soil, down, down, down. Its richness and dark and damp excited him, so much that his body went through the hormonal changes of puberty in one sexual rush of boyhood. But this was also something his mind had thrown from its plane of observation. What was Quentin’s body to it? Nothing but a closed circulatory system of blood and organs to support the hivemind.

Quentin didn’t remember it now, but three days ago he saw his mother for the last time. She’d come inside his room, knocking three little raps—knock-knock-knock—before shouldering the door open and stepping through.

Quenty, my dear, she cooed in her querulous voice, I bring snacks!

He hated the sight of her then, and the overwhelming rush of loathing was so foreign to him that it scared him. He loved his mother—he did! Promise! But for some reason, those limp locks of gray hair suddenly disgusted him. Those two simple glistening orbs she looked at him with, above that slight nose and quivering thin lips. The pale skin . . . it was vile!

She moved over to his bed bearing a plate of apple slices, and the way she stepped up and over the little mounds of musty laundry and other messes scattered across the carpet seemed blasphemous to him. A small part of his mind was aware that it wasn’t usual, the amount of dirt he’d tracked into his bedroom lately, but he hated his mother for stepping over it all. As if she were too good for the dirt.

The apple slices were a welcome sight and smell, however, so he stifled his hatred long enough to snatch the plate from her and begin nibbling. Oh, that juice! How gloriously moist!

Quentin . . . his mother said, pausing as she looked down at him from beside his bed.

What was she waiting for? he thought. Leave!

Quentin, darling, she said, "I know you’ve had a rough time this year. Those kids at your school . . . well, they’re just horrible. Everyone deals with bullying, dear, but to have your entire class single you out like that . . . I’ve spoken to your principal. He says you need to come back to school. And I agree with him."

School? What was she talking about?

The forefront of Quentin’s mind had attempted to discard this information, but there was still that small part in the back of his mind that held on. It was that same small part that knew Quentin was acting strangely as of late. That small part of his mind knew exactly what his mother was talking about, and shuddered at the memory.

This school year had started like any other, at least until lunch period on the second day. Quentin and his mother had moved here just a month before. He wasn’t in a hurry to make any friends and was perfectly happy eating his lunch by himself. While he sat at an empty picnic table eating the peanut butter sandwich his mother had packed for him, he noticed a line of ants marching its way up the wood from the dirt below.

Quentin liked ants. He liked their teamwork. He’d told his father every year before Christmas that he wanted one of those ant farms, with the dirt in the frame and all the tunnels for the ants to crawl through as they worked. Every year he’d been disappointed, but this was his father after all. Quentin hadn’t ever expected any presents. This year, however, he was holding out hope for that ant farm. It was just his mother and him now, and his mother actually loved him.

So when he saw the assembly line of ants creeping up the picnic bench, he pinched off a few crumbs from his sandwich and placed them on the tabletop. He watched the line progress up the table, and boy was he delighted to see how fast they found his little gift! He added more crumbs to the first, and soon he’d created a whole buffet line across the table, like Hansel and Gretel leading to the candy house.

He raised his sandwich in a toast. Eat up, friends, he said softly, and resumed eating.

He’d almost finished when a shadow fell across the table. Quentin looked up. He hadn’t been in this town long enough to know any of the kids, but the one standing in front of him was easy enough to remember. He didn’t know the kid’s name, but he’d heard some of the other students refer to him as Dung. Quentin wasn’t sure if this was because the kid smelled or if it was some reference to the amazing strength of a dung beetle. He’d read once that dung beetles could pull over a thousand times their body weight. This kid was huge for their age, big and beefy. And he smelled.

Look what’s happening over here, Dung said, sneering back at the group of smaller students which had followed in his wake. Looks like the new kid finally made some friends. You sure you wanna give those bugs some of your sandwich, new kid? Looks like it’s all you got.

Quentin didn’t say anything.

Maybe, Dung continued, you’re hoping they’ll return the favor and bring you some of their crumbs tomorrow.

Some of the kids behind Dung sniggered.

Not bugs, Quentin muttered into his sandwich.

Dung paused. What did you just say, new kid? Speak up.

Well, Quentin had already said it. No turning back now.

Ants aren’t bugs, he said. They’re insects.

Dung gaped at him, then turned back to the growing crowd behind him, sneering. "Ya hear that? New kid here says ants aren’t bugs. I didn’t realize you were in love with bugs, new kid. Sorry—insects. You gonna marry ’em?"

Laughter.

You gonna put some of that peanut butter on your wiener? Dung asked. Let your ants crawl all over it?

More laughter.

Dung walked up to him. Quentin froze.

I bet you wanna do that, don’t you? Put the stuff on your wiener and let your friends eat it off.

Dung reached toward him, and Quentin shied away. Dung snatched the half-eaten sandwich from his hands. He threw it in the dirt.

This is a school, new kid. Only sex offenders take their wieners out on playgrounds. Are you a sex offender?

No, Quentin said.

Dung acted like he didn’t hear. He turned back to the other kids. By now, it looked to Quentin as if the entire class had gathered around the picnic table.

I think the new kid here is a sex offender, Dung said. That’s probably why he moved here. The last school he was in ran him out of town and his parents had to move him here instead.

There was some laughter, but most of the class was silent, staring at Quentin. Quentin couldn’t believe it. They weren’t actually buying what Dung was saying, were they?

Sex offenders aren’t allowed within fifty feet of a playground, Dung announced to the entire class. My dad told me, and he’s a cop. That means the new kid here can’t go near the playground.

Quentin looked up in time to see some of the other kids nodding. He heard a few whispers of sex offender. As if any of them knew what that meant.

We don’t want any sex offenders around us, do we?

No! some kids shouted, with a few more mutters underneath the shouts. One kid, probably one of Dung’s best buddies, screamed out a HELL NO!

And that was that. Quentin wasn’t sure if any of the kids would have actually stopped him from going onto the playground—Dung would have, for sure, but the other kids? Maybe not. But Quentin didn’t care to find out. He just wanted to make it through the day and to get home and to lock himself in his new bedroom (which was smaller than his last bedroom, though he’d never say that to his mom). Once he was there, he’d be safe. He could read. They were only two days into school, so they didn’t have any homework, but yesterday Quentin had stopped by the school library and checked out a few cool encyclopedias all about insects and arachnids. He felt safer locked away, reading fascinating things like the difference between Hymenoptera and Hemiptera—a difference that Dung clearly wasn’t aware of.

Quentin felt that if he could just have his ant farm, then he’d have friends. Then he wouldn’t care if the entire school labeled him as a sex offender. He’d stay home and drop out of school and learn things by himself, in his bedroom, with his best friends in the world. He’d watch them work in their farm and he’d talk to them and tell them his thoughts on the world. His friends would listen to every word he’d say.

Two weeks had passed since Quentin Kelly’s classmates had labeled him as sex offender and made his name, his face, his very presence the ultimate taboo.

He hadn’t gone back since.

It had been easy to pretend to be sick for the remainder of the first week. After the weekend, though, when Monday rolled around and he still refused to get out of bed, his mother had wised up to what he was doing. There had been fights, some of which had dredged up sore spots they’d been avoiding for months—about Quentin’s father, and how his mother had been perfectly fine for years allowing her husband to beat her only child; how she would disappear for weeks at a time, letting Quentin suffer at the hands of his father while she was away. Quentin had told himself he’d forgiven her for all that the moment she made their move official and told him he’d never have to see his father again. But fights could get ugly fast when a child’s safety hinged on their outcome, and Quentin no longer felt safe at his new school. Why couldn’t his mother see that?

She’d caved eventually, and while he didn’t get to be a fly on the wall during her many conversations with the school staff, Quentin was aware that she’d spent quite a few days talking to them about her child’s absence and what could be done about it. While she was gone, Quentin would go exploring in the backyard. He’d spend all day grubbing through the dirt and mud looking for the insects he was reading about in his library books. At first he was disappointed that most of the specimens he found were beetles, but he learned quickly that this was to be expected. Beetle species, after all, accounted for forty percent of all insects—a staggering number, considering that scientists believed insects made up as much as ninety percent of the entire planet’s living organisms.

When his mother stopped going to those meetings at the school, she had time between her working shifts at the hospital to notice the state of his bedroom.

"This dirt! she’d shrieked. What have you been doing, Quent?"

I’ve been thinking of building my own ant farm, Mama, Quentin replied, sitting on his bedroom floor. That way you don’t have to buy me one this Christmas. What do you think?

"A . . . an ant farm? What are you talking about? Are you trying to build it in the carpet?"

Think about it, Mama! Quentin said. He was very excited about his ideas, so much so that he didn’t notice how upset she was at the mess. He wouldn’t have known what she was talking about if she called it a mess, anyhow. "In those little dinky ant farms you can get at the store, that entire colony of ants has only so little room to travel. There’s tons of tunnels, sure, but eventually they’ll run into a dead end every time. But in the carpet . . . the carpet fibers create natural tunnels for the ants, Mama. I’ll put stops around the baseboards and by the door, of course, but they’ll have this entire room! That’s like a hundred ant farms in one!"

"Absolutely not, Quentin. I’ve surrendered on this whole school fiasco, but I refuse to let you turn this house into some kind of science experiment! For God’s sake, Quenty, your mother is renting this house. Do you know how hard it was for me to get approved for this place so that I could take you away from your . . . your fa—"

But Quentin wasn’t listening. He’d opened up one of his library books to read something to his mother. Mama, he interrupted her, "do you know how many ants are on this planet? Enough so that . . . for every one person on this planet there are almost two million ants. Isn’t that amazing? I could grow an ant farm of two million ants—probably the biggest ant farm ever! And there’d still be two million ants for everyone else. You could build your own ant farm in your bedroom, Mama!"

It was at that moment that his mother screamed. Quentin stopped dead and looked up from his book. It wasn’t a scream of surprise or terror, he saw. It was a scream of frustration. Pent-up rage. From his mother? Quentin blinked in surprise, seeing her for the first time in weeks.

We are not building any goddamn ant farms, Quentin Kelly! This house will not become some kind of bug infestation!

Quentin jumped up, glowering at her.

MY FRIENDS ARE NOT BUGS!

And the door had slammed closed on his mother. Quentin jumped in surprise. It was as if a gust of wind had blown it closed. He looked at the window. It was open. He must have left it open sometime in the last few days. Sometimes, when he wanted to go looking for more insects but it was late, he climbed out the window so as not to wake his mother. Not sometimes, actually. That had become a nightly ritual by now. Quentin didn’t actually remember the last time he’d slept.

But he didn’t care. Now he kept his bedroom door closed and his window permanently open, and his mother didn’t disturb him for days after that last fight. He’d built his ant farm, and the dirt accumulated at a rate that would have been alarming to anyone other than Quentin. His specimen collection became bigger and bigger, not just in overall size but in the size of the individual insects as well. Some of the library books had sections in which they described how to build an insect collection, and they made his stomach turn, so he quickly ripped those pages out and discarded them in the trashcan out his window and around the corner.

Kill the insects? Pin them up in shadow boxes? Embalm them in jars?

How could anyone do that to Quentin’s only friends in the world?

Knock-knock-knock.

Quenty, my dear, I bring snacks!

Quentin looked up from where he lay in bed. It was his mother. She’d started coming into his bedroom a few days after their fight, ignoring the mess on the carpet in order to bring him snacks.

When she stood over him as he nibbled on the apple slices, savoring the juices, and she started talking about that school . . . that was when the voices began to prick at Quentin’s mind. His mind, he’d found recently, was vast, and could support so much. To compensate, however, he’d begun propping up such a vast mind with different strings of consciousness, which he called his voices.

She’ll make you go back to school.

She’ll make you abandon us!

Who will feed us? Who will protect us?

We need our friend! Quentin, aren’t you our friend?

Aren’t you?! Aren’t you, Quentin?! Our friend?!

Smith put the car in park and killed the engine.

Johnson, shut up, she said. We’re here.

The two got out of the sedan and Johnson looked at the house whose address he’d plugged into the GPS. Jesus, he said. I hope they’re not renting.

The small house looked as if it were sweating. The boards of the walls bulged outward, and a thick black substance was oozing out of the cracks between them. It looked to Johnson as if the house could once have been painted a mellow yellow color, but now it was a graying, splintered mess. Shingles had popped off recently, and the place seemed to shimmer in Johnson’s vision.

He rubbed his eyes, looked again. The house still swam in the air. It’s September, isn’t it?

Smith glanced at him. Yes.

So why is the air around that place dancing around like it’s the hottest day of the year?

Good question, Smith said. Let’s go find out. Leave the file.

Johnson looked at her, then back down at the manila folder he clutched in one hand. But . . . what if I need to reference something in the kid’s file?

Maybe you should have memorized it beforehand, Smith said. Or at least studied it on the drive over here, instead of jawing about dumping the kid in Antarctica.

"I’m just saying, it’s Antarctica. Big block of ice, no bugs. He wouldn’t have any power in Antarctica."

"Belgica antarctica."

Gesundheit.

"Very funny, Johnson. No, Belgica antarctica are wingless midges. They live in Antarctica."

Oh. Damn. So nowhere’s safe, huh?

Just leave the file, Johnson.

Johnson sighed and stuffed the file through the cracked window, then adjusted his suit jacket. That shimmer in the air still unsettled him, so he took out his sunglasses and slipped them on.

Smith rolled her eyes. You ready?

Together, he and Smith entered the yard leading to the house’s front door. The grass on either side of the cracked pavement was utterly lifeless. They hadn’t been in a drought in years, but this grass was dried up and looked as though it’d been like this for centuries. The ground was just as dried and cracked as the little sidewalk. No weeds, Johnson noticed. Interesting.

They stepped up to the front door, and Johnson felt it the moment they stepped into that dubious shimmery air. Like oil on the skin. It also seemed to be a few shades darker in the awning than it had any right to be at three o’clock on a September afternoon. Johnson took his sunglasses off. Yup, it wasn’t just him—the air was darker here. Heavier.

He was about to say as much to his partner, but before he could Smith reached out and rapped one fist against the wood.

Squelch.

Smith swore under her breath. Her knuckles had sunk into the wood as if she’d driven them into uncooked meat. She wiped the back of her hand against her slacks.

"Well, that’s not up to code," Johnson joked.

Smith glared at him, searched around the doorframe, and pressed the doorbell.

The two stood there, shoulder to shoulder, waiting. They knew the doorbell worked, at least—the ding-dong! was perfectly audible from here, even if the house seemed to be underwater and the sun seemed to be a few more planets away than usual.

They waited.

Smith rang the bell again.

And a third time.

Almost immediately after the third ding-dong! the door opened. It didn’t open quickly, nor did it make any kind of creaky-hinges sound a door should make. Instead, it fought with its frame before finally letting go of its moorings with a SQUELCH! much louder than the one Smith’s fist had made.

Smith and Johnson stared into darkness. Johnson got the feeling he was staring into a black hole, and a shiver whispered up his spine like an insect.

Hello? Smith called out. Her voice was swallowed in the black hole.

Who’s there? Johnson called out, louder.

Silence.

We’re here to speak to a Mrs. Kelly, Smith said, raising her voice. It’s about her son, ten-year-old Quentin Kelly.

A prolonged pause in which Johnson was expecting another bout of silence, then: Quenty?

The sound made that insectile shiver run up Johnson’s spine again. It was small and distant, much more distant than a house this size would allow. Like she was calling out from the bottom of a deep well.

Mrs. Kelly? Smith called back.

You’re here for . . . my Quenty?

Correct, Mrs. Kelly, Smith said. Would you mind coming to the front door so we may have a word?

After another prolonged pause, Smith inhaled to call out again. But she stopped when a noise reached them. A scuffling, like the murmur of a large crowd who’d grown restless. It scuffled and shuffled and all the while grew closer and louder, though still a long way off.

This is creepy as f—

Smith shushed Johnson, glaring at him.

A form appeared in the black hole before them, and to Johnson it looked human-shaped, at least vaguely so. A head, a torso, maybe wrapped in a bunch of quilts or something, but still an upright body. It looked to be maybe five or six feet away from the doorjamb, but it was still almost completely swallowed in the dark.

What was keeping the sun